Family Court, what ways could it be better??

Jennifer - posted on 01/25/2012
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So, a friend of mine just lost custody of his kids. No worries, he will get them back in a few months cause mom is going to prison! She was caught(with her bf) cooking meth in the house. Kids were present, and meth, needles, and all those chemicals were all over the house. The judged refused to look at the drug test from her criminial case, which were all positive!!

A mother from my daughters school just got her kids back. They were taken, this last time, cause they were left in her truck while she was in the casino for at least 3 hours. She was so drunk that she passd out in the cop car while being questioned. She had intended to drive home.

WTF is wrong with our family courts? Anyone else think that these judges must be smoking some crack? How can they expect people to report abuse and then do nothing??

Oklahoma DHS is in legal trouble, it is being sued over the abuse in the system. I know there is not a whole lot we can do, but I'd like to hear some ideas!

I personally would like to see them allow teachers to testify to the judge. As it stands, we are required to report, but no one listens to what we have to say! We face all the back lash, though. That's crap!

I'd also like to see jury trials. If 12 normal everyday people think it's abuse, it probably is!

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Jennifer - posted on 01/25/2012

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I absolutly agree about the drug screening! Seen that one so often! And most times if one parent is abusing, the other is, too. (in my case cited above, both parents had been using, but dad had stopped, both parties were still doing drug screens, but dad was clean) My husband and I were going to pay for screening for him, myself, and his ex, but she dropped her case.

Here, men were rarely ever granted custody, but they were also not ever made to pay alimony and child support until recently. The swing I am seeing is that women walk away as much as men do, now. Several kids in my daughters class are being raised by single men. But if the mom reappears after several years, she is very likely to take custody and get child support, even though she never paid a dime. Those are rare situations, though. It's the out right abuse that bothers me the most. The kids who are neglected and abused. The ones with no stablity, no food and no love. We see it every day at our school, and it is so frustrating!!

I think and have believe quite strongly that we're still under the pendulum effect in regard to child custody. We're less than 45 years from when fathers got custody 99% of the time in a divorce. For as long as courts and family disputes were around, women were shafted. Even in cases of physical abuse, women were not believed adnd the men got custody.

What changed? The women's rights movement came along and fought tooth and nail to get the system changed. Now women had a fair shot but unfortunately like all pendulums, it will swing the almost the same distance from where it began. Now it's the men who regularly lose their children. It's not fair but we did it to ourselves. We need to work very hard to make the court system fair to all parties. We need to have better methods of screening for child abuse and to lose the mindset that all men are potential pedophiles and all women are Donna Reed.

Yes, judges should be required to review drug testings and any DWI's that involve children. They should not however just take one party's word for drug/alcohol abuse by the other.

There are a lot of things that need to be fixed but some of them are on a societal-attitude level.